New York City’s environmental justice activists have long been sounding the alarm about the disproportionate effects of toxic air and pollution on communities of color. This week a little more progress was made when Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a $20 million Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) investment to improve childhood asthma outcomes in the Bronx.
The funding is coming from the MTA’s congestion pricing mitigation program, which has allocated $100 million to neighborhoods disproportionately burdened by environmental pollution and climate impacts.
“New Yorkers are already benefitting from congestion pricing, and now we’re taking it a step further by investing those funds to improve asthma outcomes for children in the Bronx,” said Mamdani in a statement. “Every New Yorker deserves to breathe cleaner air. This initiative puts public health front and center as we build a cleaner, healthier city.”
Nationally, the statistics show that Black children are the most likely to have asthma. This is usually due to living near polluting power plants or a heavily congested highway, in rental housing with mold and other triggers, and the longstanding effects of redlining and systemically racist housing laws. They also die at a much higher rate.
This is especially true in neighborhoods in the South Bronx that were exposed to a combination of peaker plants (which run during high demand periods), highways, and truck traffic. These resulted in asthma hospitalization rates in the area eight times higher than the national average. Because of epidemic levels of respiratory diseases, especially among Black and Brown children, the area is known as “Asthma Alley.”
According to city data, asthma-related emergency department visits among children ages five to 17 have declined citywide from 2009 to 2024. However, inequities persist in East and Central Harlem, the South Bronx, and parts of Brooklyn.
“The data shows clearly that childhood asthma disproportionately impacts the Bronx, where rates in several neighborhoods remain alarmingly high — a reminder that historical inequities and injustices in healthcare, environmental, and urban planning policies continue to affect the well-being of far too many New Yorkers,” said Dr. Helen Arteaga, deputy mayor for Health and Human Services in a statement.
The MTA, in partnership with the Department of Transportation, will break down the $20 million funding into two major programs: $8.9 million for the Bronx Asthma Program and $11.1 million to expand the Asthma Case Management Program. The programs aim to offer intensive support for Bronx students with asthma, including having medicine available in-school, at 15 schools.
“By directing resources to the most at-risk communities, we are taking steps to improve children’s health, help parents spend less on asthma treatment, and address harmful policies that have impacted our fellow New Yorkers for too long,” said Arteaga.